In this May 17, 2016 file photo, a new sticker is placed on the door at the ceremonial opening of a gender neutral bathroom at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle.

In this May 17, 2016 file photo, a new sticker is placed on the...

The Trump administration on Wednesday overturned federal guidelines that former President Barack Obama issued last year mandating open access to public school restrooms and locker rooms by transgender students, throwing the subject back to local districts and outraging LGBT advocates who called the new directive discriminatory.

The Justice and Education departments sent a letter to schools nationwide saying the policy Obama set forth in May was no longer in effect, but that federal laws protecting students from bullying and harassment remain unchanged.

The new directive does not affect schools in California, where the Legislature passed a law in 2013 requiring full access to bathrooms and locker rooms by transgender students. Many Bay Area districts, including in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose, had adopted open-access rules well before the state law took effect.

Local activists, however, said the change indicated that the Trump administration was likely to be more hostile toward LGBT interests than Obama. Conservatives countered that Obama had exceeded his constitutional authority in seeking to extend federal authority over local school policies.

The Obama administration’s policy guidance said that under its interpretation of the federal education law known as Title IX, “schools receiving federal money may not discriminate based on a student’s sex, including a student’s transgender status.”

The Trump administration’s repeal letter said the Obama directive did not “contain extensive legal analysis or explain how the position is consistent with the express language of Title IX, nor did (it) undergo any formal public process.”

It added, “Please note that the withdrawal of these guidance documents does not leave students without protections from discrimination, bullying or harassment.”

Shortly before the change was made public, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that President Trump “has maintained for a long time that this is a states’ rights issue and not one for the federal government.”

Denunciations came fast from activists and several Democratic politicians, who said Trump was abdicating the government’s responsibility to ensure that transgender youths aren’t targeted for discrimination.

“It’s shameful and cruel that government and officials are using their power to target transgender youth, who are simply trying to go to school and live their lives,” said Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, which has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to enshrine transgender access rights to bathrooms and locker rooms. “What it will do is send a clear message to transgender youth that their government does not value them and that it will not protect their rights.”

In San Francisco — where the school district became the first in the nation, in 2003, to allow transgender students to use facilities corresponding to their gender identity — Mayor Ed Lee and school board President Shamann Walton issued a statement calling the new order “a misguided act that will victimize children most in need of our support.”

Obama’s order has been on hold nationwide since August, when a federal judge in Texas sided with 13 mostly Republican-run states that argued the federal government had overreached its constitutional power. The Trump administration said earlier this month that it would not appeal the ruling.

Former San Francisco schools Superintendent Richard Carranza now leads the district in Houston, which already has a policy accommodating transgender students, but many rural communities around the urban hub do not.

He said of Wednesday’s dictate: “This Trump administration has lost its ever-lovin’ mind.”

“With all the issues and challenges we have in our country, from the economy to job development to international relations, we’re talking about bathrooms?” he said. “That’s what we’re talking about?”

Wednesday’s announcement was greeted as a victory by those who have opposed the Obama order from the moment it was issued.

Brad Dacus, who helped lead an unsuccessful effort in 2014 for a ballot initiative to overturn California’s transgender bathroom law, said he hoped Trump’s action bolsters the legal argument against a case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court next month on the issue. That case was filed by Gavin Grimm, a transgender teenager in Virginia who sued his school board for preventing him from using the boys bathroom.

“I think President Obama, in his zeal to leave legacies, was a bit too quick to push his radical executive order upon every public school in the United States,” said Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute in Sacramento. “While students who have gender identity dysphoria need to be recognized and protected from bullying and harassment, any policy regarding their needs must also be in balance with the fundamental privacy needs of students of the opposite biological sex.

“It simply is not reasonable that a 13-year-old girl in a locker room should have to undress and be naked, potentially, in front of a 16-year-old biological male simply because of the male’s state of mind with regard to his gender identity.”

Hayashi’s law center is supporting Grimm’s lawsuit, which will mark the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has heard a case regarding transgender youth. Last year, the group filed a federal suit on a similar case involving Ash Whitaker, a transgender boy in Wisconsin who says his civil rights were violated when his school required him to use a bathroom all by himself. That case will be heard in a federal appeals court next month, just after the Grimm case is heard by the Supreme Court.

However, additional clarification of that protection would be important, he said, because transgender youths “continue to face discrimination.” He said 78 percent of transgender students from kindergarten to 12th grade report “alarming rates of harassment,” and 35 percent report being assaulted.

Dacus said his goal in opposing transgender bathroom dictates is not about discrimination. “This is not about ignoring anyone’s needs,” he said. “It’s about being truly open-minded to the needs of all students.”

He said his institute is still hoping to get an initiative on the ballot overturning the California law — this time aiming for 2018 — and stands ready to legally “defend any individuals who have been visually violated in the locker room and feel their rights have been infringed upon.”

A San Francisco police spokesman, Officer Robert Rueca, said he knew of no incidents of trouble regarding transgender people’s use of bathrooms in the city. That was echoed by Matt Haney, a city school board member who wrote a policy last year strengthening the district’s transgender rules to require all new construction to have at least one single bathroom stall that is gender neutral.

“We have had zero problems with our transgender access policy and nothing but widespread support from our school communities,” Haney said.